Congress Considers Mandatory Crypto Backdoors

disappear writes: "Wired news reports that Congress is considering restrictions on crypto software in the wake of the terrorist attack. 'Nuff said." This will be the next battle -- especially in the wake of this week's tragedies, and the the allegations that the prime suspect Osama Bin Laden is a heavy crypto user. The battle of privacy and safety is going to begin in earnest now.

Comments

Re:I don't think so.

[The Pim]

Criminals, on the other hand, will continue to use widely available crypto packages with no back door and will still be able to transmit messages without threat of law enforcement decrypting them.

Think harder: With carnivore, the government sees all traffic. They see crypto they can't break, they trace it with help from the ISP, they pay someone a not-so-friendly visit.

Please stop convincing yourself it can't work. It can work, and pretending otherwise will only make it more likely.

Specious argument

[Pope]

If everybody had a knife on those planes, do you think the hijackers would have even tried to take over the flight, if they knew everybody on board could cut them, or stab them.

And how many more drunken knife fights in bars would there be if everyone carried knives on a regular basis?

It's just like towns in Texas that everybody carries guns in, there is nearly no crime in those towns.

Prove to me that there's "less crime." How measured, per incident, per captia?
Keep in mind that those towns are pretty small. How would this make my city of 3.5 million people safer?